The Gilded Scarab (39 page)

“T
HE
MUSEUM
,”
I said. “I’m sure it’s the museum. Nothing else fits. He’s after the stuff Ned found in Aegypt. All that gold to make him rich. Collectors won’t ask questions about where he gets the artifacts.” I paced across the floor. Anything to get the fidgets under control. “He said something about only needing Ned’s thumb.”

Hawkins’s breath was so sharp everyone turned to look at him. He straightened up, shedding misery like an old coat. He nodded, his mouth stretching into a feral grin. “The storeroom in the museum is secured with a lock that needs Ned’s thumbprint to open. Lancaster’s right. He’s after the gold, sir.”

Underneath the Gallowglass’s voice, I could hear shouting and the noise of running, booted feet. The Gallowglass spoke in sharp little bursts. “How can he get into the museum? It’s locked and guarded.”

Hawkins was energized, his eyes brighter. He took a harquebus from Alan and slapped a phlogiston tube into the breech. The gun whined into full charge. “They’re both on staff there. They have the codes and keys to the main doors. Meredith’s armed and he has people with him. He’d have no trouble getting in and closing down the alarms.”

The Gallowglass sighed. “All right. We have no other ideas. No other options. Are you armed, Sam? Get in there and check it out. Do what you can to get Ned. I’ll be there as fast as possible.”

“Pretty sure Meredith has men watching the street, sir. We can’t go there directly. We’ll have to sneak out of here and work our way around. If they see us….”

Hawkins didn’t need to spell out the possible consequences. No one did, least of all to Ned’s father.

“Hell!” Behind the Gallowglass’s panting voice, an engine roared into life. “We’re on our way. Fifteen minutes.”

“Go to the side door in Montague Street, sir,” Hawkins said. “I’ll meet you there.”

“What about the back doors in Montague Place? They’re closer to the storeroom.” The Gallowglass had his breath back.

“No. Not those.” All this damn talking! We should just get in there and get Ned back. I shook my head and went on, “They’re too close to the staircase down to the storeroom. We don’t know how many men Daniel has, but he’d be a fool not to have a watch over the back door and that staircase. I don’t think he’s that much of a fool.”

“If they have any sense, they’ll be watching the side door, too, but it’s a risk we have to take. Agreed, sir?” Hawkins waited for the Gallowglass’s consent. “Thank you, sir. We’re leaving here now, sir. We’ll meet you in Montague Street.”

“Keep the Marconis on,” said the Gallowglass. “We need to stay connected.”

I caught at Hawkins’s arm. “Leaving? Without being seen? How?”

We could get into Will’s backyard, but the house next to his had built right to the back boundary wall. The wall there was two storeys high. Impassable. Armed men leaving from Will’s house wouldn’t be any less suspicious to a watcher than leaving from mine. I couldn’t see any way of getting out of the coffeehouse unseen without putting Ned into even more danger.

Hawkins shrugged. “We go out over the roof to the Plough, and get in the attic window there.”

Over the roof.

What. The. Hell?

Of course we would go over the roof. Perfectly ordinary way to leave a house.

Hawkins hefted the gun in his hands. “Right. We’d better be off. We need someone on the roof here, watching the front of the museum.”

He eyed Alan Jenkins.

“No,” said Jenkins flatly. “I’m going with you. I’ll manage somehow. Hugh’ll help.”

“I’ll do it,” Mrs. Somers said in a tone that brooked no argument. “I can’t fight, but I can stand watch and handle communications.”

Will, I noticed, rolled his eyes but didn’t argue. Wise man. Alan fitted her with a Marconi and a set of night goggles. Hugh grabbed the bag he’d brought from Will’s, and we made our way upstairs to my bedroom, running, taking the stairs two at a time.

I went out the French windows onto the flat roof of the extension and took a look at the roof. The slope was a sharp incline with a brick-built spine, supporting the chimney stacks, coming out like a low wall between my roof and Will’s next door. Every roof was divided in the same way—we’d have to get over each spine and clamber around the chimney stacks to run across the roofs. Will was hauling Mrs. Somers up the incline to settle her a couple of roofs toward the corner, somewhere behind the parapet on the street side, where she could watch the museum unseen. At least the slates were dry—they’d have been like an ice slide if there had been any rain. I did not anticipate I’d enjoy this one iota, but if Annabelle Somers could do this without complaint, I was damn sure I could.

Hugh called me back into the room. The bag he’d brought yielded metal cutters as well as fighting gear, and he got us out of the remains of the manacles in a matter of seconds. I shed my evening coat and put on the short black jacket he handed me. It looked like a remnant of his old uniform. It wasn’t mine. Too loose. But it buttoned up to the neck and hid the white of my evening shirt. I cinched the heavy leather gun belt from my service pistol over it and changed smooth-soled evening shoes for my old, battered combat boots with cleated soles. Alan handed me some night goggles. We’d go as soon as Will had Mrs. Somers in place.

The clamminess of sweat prickled between my shoulder blades and down my spine. A couple of times I tasted the sourness of bile in my throat, and my mouth filled with saliva, so I had to swallow often. I knew this feeling. This was the moment of fear just before a launch into pitched battle, the feeling that focused down hard onto action the instant my aerofighter hurtled out of the tube. Then it would all change in a flash. The blood would sing and the indifference, the dreadful queasiness, and the feelings of loathing and revulsion… all those would be burned away by the rush of adrenaline, and blood-singing excitement, and the need to fight to live.

Only it wasn’t my life I feared for now. Not mine.

“You know this man, sir?” asked Hugh. “The one who shot us?”

I huffed out a sound that wasn’t a laugh. I had never felt less like laughing. But it did duty for one. I pushed my borrowed pistol into the holster on my belt and tied it down, so I could rub my hands dry on my trouser legs. The clamminess was spreading, and my hands were too slippery to have a strong enough grip on the pistol. My gut was roiling. “I wish I didn’t. He’s besotted with Ned.”

“Besotted?” Hugh frowned.

“I don’t think it’s love. Perhaps it’s a habit. Daniel’s always been a little desperate. He snatches at things, wants to own them. He snatches at people.” I had to dry the other hand now, and I looked down at it, concentrating hard to keep the fear at bay. “He snatched at me. What he heard through the scarabs…. Ned and I weren’t always… mostly me. I wasn’t always kind about Daniel. I suspect we… I hurt his feelings. And we hurt his pride.”

“I don’t get it,” said Hugh, shaking his head.

“He thinks Ned betrayed him. With me.”

Hugh’s mouth dropped open and he stared, eyes widening. I grimaced. I hadn’t intended him to find out about me like that.

A soft, clear whistle sounded outside. Will Somers was ready.

“Not now, Lancaster.” Hawkins straightened. “Time to go.”

Time to stop all this pointless blathering.

Time to go and get Ned.

S
CRAMBLING
ACROSS
rooftops in the midnight darkness was not a hobby I intended to take up any time soon. Four buildings stood between Lancaster’s Luck and the Plough at the southern corner of the street. Every roof sloped at a pitch best described as uncomfortably precipitous.

Doing it on a good day would have made me pause. Doing it less than an hour after being hit by a neural disruptor, with night goggles turning the dark into a study of grays… only terror for Ned got me out on those tiles. He was at the other end of this perilous path across the roofs. I had to get to him. I couldn’t let him down.

Hawkins went first, with Will hard on his heels.

It was a scramble. The roof spine was tiled with triangular roof slates, rough enough to cling to as I pulled myself up the slope in a series of jerks. Will waited for me at the brick wall dividing our roofs, sitting astride it. He grabbed my hand and, grunting, pulled me up against the chimney stack. I flung an arm around the chimney and held on. The next chimney stack, between Will’s house and his neighbor’s, was twenty-five feet away. A shadow was already there, inching around it—Hawkins. The sky was all smoke and fumes as usual, blocking the faint glow of an anemic sliver of a new moon. The light was so bad that maybe luck was on our side. Provided we were careful, we shouldn’t be noticed. Short of one of us catching their attention by hurtling down into the street below, no one at the museum would be likely to see us.

Will glanced behind me to where Annabelle Somers crouched behind the balustraded parapet of the house two doors up from mine. He couldn’t possibly have seen her in the poor light, but his mouth was hard and shut tight. Who could blame him? She should be safe enough there, but it was the man’s wife. He grimaced at me, then hopped over the wall onto his own roof, his back to the chimney stack. He hesitated, blew out a breath, and an instant later he had crossed the roof, taking short quick steps, a foot each side of the roof ridge, and was at the next chimney.

Oh, joy. My turn.

I wriggled around the chimney, clutching at the brickwork for support. My foot slipped once, making me bite back a yelp. My blood pounded. I breathed with harsh gasps through my mouth. Will waved and beckoned. Behind me, Alan scrambled up the roof slope, boosted from behind by Hugh, who huffed out hoarse encouragement to us both.

I glanced to the right. Will’s house had no extension above the first floor level. A long drop. That wouldn’t end well. Don’t think about it. An instant to prepare. That’s all. A split second. I bent my right leg and flattened my foot against the chimney brickwork. My heart beat faster.

Now.

Before I lost my nerve.

I pushed off hard and ran for it along the ridge of Will’s roof. The cleated boots were lifesavers. A dozen shortish steps, fast as I could do it, arms outstretched to grab the chimney. I fetched up against it so hard it knocked the breath out of me. Will’s hand closed over my wrist, steadied me.

One roof down. Three more to go.

I grasped Will’s hand briefly in thanks and worked my way around to the other side of the stack and the next roof.

Another deep breath. Swallowing to work a dry mouth, to get some saliva to moisten it. Another deep breath.

And off again.

Run. Grab the chimney. Breathe. Scramble around to the next roof. No out-jutting lower storey on this building at all. Nothing between me and the yard, four storeys down in the dark. Nothing between me and a broken neck. Don’t think about it. Run. Throw out my arms for balance. Don’t look down. Run. Grab the chimney.

And oh thank you, God! The Plough, at last. I inched around its chimney and clung on. I looked back. Hugh and Alan were behind me, taking it a little slower than I had, Hugh in front with Alan clinging to his jacket with both hands. Arms outstretched and looking straight at me, Hugh was balancing for both of them. I don’t think I breathed until they landed up against the chimney. Hugh grinned at me over the chimney pots. Bless him. He was stainless steel, was Hugh.

The Plough’s attic window, like mine, jutted out from the roof slope. Hawkins had already kicked in the window and was out of sight. Will was just scrambling in after him. Alan got himself around the chimney while I slid down to the gutter. I waited for him, one arm outstretched. I had my other arm braced inside the window frame and felt someone, Hawkins or Will, clamp onto it for extra support. Alan slid down to join me. His clutch on my arm was painfully tight when we caught at each other, but he nodded, mouth set, as I steadied him.

I slipped in through the window as soon as Alan had a good grip on the frame. Hawkins and Will were there to help me through to safety.

I may have thanked them. Effusively.

Will grinned and slapped me on the shoulder. He turned to help Hawkins maneuver Alan over the windowsill. “I thought you aeronauts had to have a head for heights?”

“Oh I do. I do. But I don’t have a head for plummeting down from them.”

He laughed, the unfeeling false friend that he was. They got Alan in safely. Last of all, Hugh swung in and, not pausing to catch our breath, we rushed for the stairs. The landlord, Clayton, burst out of his bedroom wielding a handy-looking cricket bat with both hands.

“Gallowglass!” Hawkins roared, and we all raced past him, leaving him staring. The cricket bat descended slowly from the “ready” position.

“Tell you later, Barney!” called Hugh, over his shoulder.

We careered down the stairs and flung open the side door opening onto Little Russell Street. If it wouldn’t have slowed us down, I’d have kissed the flagstones in relief at being at ground level. Alan Jenkins gave me a shaky grin and a thumbs-up. Another man made of stainless steel. His courage bolstered mine.

The one good thing was that the mad scramble across the roof tiles had been the equivalent of hurtling down the
Ark Royal
’s launch tubes. I was like my own little aerofighter, firing on all aether cylinders. The sickness had gone, taking the clamminess and shakes with it. I wanted to get into the damn museum and find Ned. And possibly put Daniel permanently out of his misery.

Hawkins spoke into his Marconi as we ran along Little Russell Street to the corner with Duke Street. “Out, and on our way, sir.”

The Gallowglass would have heard our entire run over the roofs through the Marconis, but I suppose it was a kindness to reassure him. Alan slung an arm around Hugh’s neck for support, and off we went, running down Duke Street to Hart Street. Our route would take us west a little and then back north on Bloomsbury Square and up to Montague Street. Every inch would be glowing from the streetlights and offer no cover. I couldn’t see how any passersby—and even in the early hours, there would be a lot of people around—would miss half a dozen armed men running about waving pistols.